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"What sites do you pay attention to?" I get asked this all the time. Well, I follow lots of them -- and for different reasons. Some because of their proud legacy. Others because they disrupted the old guard. Many because they raised a boatload of VC money. A few because they're media darlings. I'm also intrigued by sites I can't quite figure out, or find myself asking, "Why?" And, I'm glued to those started by media icons, old or new.

With all that, visitor traffic (see the charts below) is a common denominator and a critical component of monetization. It’s a starting point for all sorts of analysis — from the scientific to the subjective. Or, in my case, the chance to put audience trends of 25 sites through the lens of a 40-year journalistic career:

-- As a "desk man" turned editor in the 70s, 80s and 90s for wire services, newspapers and magazines, each largely subscriber, advertising or newsstand games.

-- As a digital convert at AOL in the 00s, always thinking about subscribers and traffic, often when the news turned tragic (successive 90 million page view days during the Virginia Tech massacre).

-- As an entrepreneur during the rise of social media, fighting for my first million monthly visitors with revenue concerns still ahead of me.

-- As a product guy at a storied media brand building new models for journalism and advertising and reinventing itself (again) to turn mobile pennies into mobile dollars.

In the quest to prove growth and success, Web sites rotate between using comScore, a third party reporting service, or their so-called internal numbers, typically from Google Analytics. The comScore numbers are usually lower because they allegedly do not double count a visitor who might enter a site through multiple browsers. The comScore numbers, used by ad agency media buyers, pretty much put everyone on the same playing field.

So, where to begin? It's obvious. That ski slope-like red line is The Huffington Post, the site famous for building traffic on the backs of Friends of Arianna and unpaid bloggers. Today, in the words of one top editor, it's "hemorrhaging traffic from Facebook." In fact, HuffPo's audience stood at 119 million unique visitors in October 2014, then plummeted to 86.8 million in August before recovering somewhat to 94 million in December. Mobile exclusive traffic for The HuffPo is growing (as it is for every site), to 55.8 million in December from 47.2 million 15 months ago. Its Pulitzer now a memory, the challenges for The HuffPo are many. How to recoup those traffic losses and live with Facebook’s algorithmic power? What to do about video after an expensive failure with TV-style talk news on the Web? Figuring out a native ad execution for so many smartphone visitors. And most interesting of all, how to be part AOL, which Arianna chafes at, when AOL itself has "vanished" within Verizon, its new corporate parent.

Before some other site specific detail, here's what also catches my eye. Notice the three broad audience groupings: sites at 30 million-plus unique visitors (the first chart); the cluster in the high teens to 25 million (the second chart below); and the group from 8 or 9 million to 15 million, give or take (also the second chart).

The first group generally takes a more mass-market approach with different content-creation models, from expensive linear staff structures (problematic wth mobile ad rates what they are) to the more scalable and cost efficient. Each site in the second group, except Time, which can't quite break into the first group, took on a persona to woo the millennial crowd. Vice is edgy, SBNation crowd sources around the young fan, Mic unabashedly hits every youthful topic it can, and Upworthy plays the inspirational card for Facebook likes and shares. Sites in the third group started out using old school newsroom economics to play an old school game -- writing thoughtful "explainers" for other journalists and their news junkie communities. That’s changed as their traffic flattened and VCs no doubt wanted to see more crowd-pleasing revenue-generating pages. Last week came Penquins, Explained, a nine-point analysis (#6 Why do penguins need sweaters) with nine cute photos, three graphics and a video. Even before that, Everybody farts... 9 surprising facts about flatulence.

1) The Beltway Battle: Left for dead, despite the Jeff Bezos takeover, The Washington Post sneaked past The New York Times in the last two months. How? Well, this is no longer the newspaper of Ben Bradlee, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of Watergate fame. The web site's got a little something for everyone and perhaps less than ever for the political elite who bolted for Politico. Bezos and the newsroom seem to be optimizing for a mix of catchy and premium content. A team pumps out traffic-generating content early in the day, while traditionalists do what they do. Yahoo's homepage, a mass-market firehouse, drives significant traffic. So does Facebook, which continues to tune its algorithm for quality over clickbait. Take a look at the third chart: The WashPo’s mobile-only visitors blew past The NYT and put it nearly on par with the HuffPo. As for The NYT, where I worked from 1978-83, it still clings to its Old Gray Lady, print-centric roots, with many editors to this day still pushing back against video, and asking, is it a Page One Story? The NYT's content marketing/custom publishing operation, the size of a second-tier city or regional newspaper newsroom, will likely need to adjust its microsite-like output for the demands of smartphone consumers.

2) How's Business? Check out The Wall Street Journal. Paywall and all, traffic is finally growing after hanging in the low 20 million unique visitor range for the first three quarters of 2015. It shot to 26.7 million in October and then 33.1 million in December, although its exclusive mobile traffic remains below the magic 50% mark. That says something about its demographic. BusinessInsider, on a traffic tear for years, peaked at 45.3 million in July and then began a descent (to a low of 37.6 million in November) shortly before its purchase by Germany's Axel Springer in late September. It's definitely tapping the millennial crowd, with 25.4 million exclusive mobile visitors by year's end, though the question to ask is at what CPMs? And how's The Mayor doing? Near the start of the year, Bloomberg.com launched a redesign that folded in Businessweek.com, too. In October 2014, the two separate sites combined for 25.4 million unique visitors. In December 2015, the one big Bloomberg.com site attracted slightly less than that, or 25.1 million visitors. And rather anemic mobile-only usage (only 8 million) is hardly growing at all. Perhaps that's why The Mayor, a terminal junkie, suggested in a staff meeting that maybe he didn't need a web site after all. As for FORBES, see below.

Note: Bloomberg's October 2014 traffic number includes BusinessWeek.com. Bloomberg.com relaunched in early 2015, folding in BusinessWeek (Read more in post).

3) Millennial Madness: The race is on for the demo that will make up 50% of the workforce by 2020. FORBES certainly wants its share, but Vice,Mic.com, Ozy and others all pitch themselves as The One. There's a lot of content being produced to patronize the Facebook set. Ozy, backed by Laurene Powell Jobs and other Silicon Valley notables, certainly takes that approach. The site baffles me. It's raised a total of $35 million, $20 million of that coming from Axel Springer 15 months ago, giving it a valuation of something like $200 million. It's gone from 1 million visitors in both January and June last year to 11 million in December 2015. Traffic patterns suggest a dependence on viral hits. In July 2015, comScore reported no traffic, either because of reporting issue (a pretty rare thing) or failure to meet minimum traffic requirements. One month later, unique visitors soared to 6 million — and mostly mobile-only. In looking through Alexa, another reporting service, Ozy's bounce rate hovers at an exceptionally high 75%, meaning visitors leave after viewing only one page. That's either a function of a huge mobile audience or something to do with traffic acquisition. Whichever, monetization won't be easy. And check out those numbers for Bustle.com, a site “for & by women" — 29 million, 24 mobile-only. The content on Sunday morning says it all. In the News, more than 15 posts about the blizzard that paralyzed the east coast (most by a guy). In Lifestyle, 18 Valentine’s Day Recipes, A Cow Loose in New York City, 5 Ways to Respond to Sexism in the Workplace. In Fashion & Beauty, Kylie Jenner Just Carried the Most Adorable Bag, Never Say These Things to People With Thin Brows, How to Trick People Into Thinking You Showered.

4) Trapped In a Time Machine: For Time Inc., it's been some ride. First came Pathfinder, described by then CEO Don Logan as "giving new definition to the term black hole," one of the most memorable quotes of the Internet era. Then came AOL's purchase of Time Warner and the subsequent $100 billion debacle, the biggest annual loss in corporate history. And then came Time Inc. effectively ceding its digital properties to CNN. In climbing out of all that, it's hanging in — sort of. Both Time.com and Fortune.com have broadened their content offerings, leading to traffic gains, though growth for each has stalled in the last months. Time.com hit 27.3 million visitors in July 2015, then steadily declined to 23.2 million in December, putting it where it started at the beginning of the year. Fortune.com’s been in the 10.5 to 12.5 million range for the last five months after starting 2015 at nearly 7 million. SI.com, one of the greatest sports brands ever and not included in these charts, is nowhere to be found (see below) except the rear view mirror of both SBNation and BleacherReport, which is owned by Time Warner’s Turner Sports Network (oh, the ironies of the AOL Time Warner-Time Inc. breakup). As for the Time Inc. Network of sites: 114 million, up from 96 million at the beginning of 2015, with People.com making up nearly a third of the total, although barely up from the start of 2015.

5) New Media, Old Models: The jam-up of sites is also notable in that many of them implemented old media models. In some cases, lots of high-paid masthead types and hierarchical editing processes. In others, classic newsroom staff structures with reduced salaries for a new breed of less experienced journalist. In other words, the path to more traffic requires bringing on another low-cost, full-time writer. One startup with multiple sites and far less revenue than FORBES has 33% more employees.

comScore defines mobile as smartphones and tablets, though smartphone usage for nearly every site is far larger.

6) The Rollup:Vox Media owns and runs Vox.com, TheVerge, SBNation and a few other sites. Gawker Media has Gawker.com, Gizmodo, Deadspin and other sites. As the charts show, their individual sites face various audience challenges. Vox Media’s audience totaled 59.8 million in December 2015, up 3 million for the year. Gawker’s total audience was 49 million in December 2015, down 10 million for the year. Still, at those levels both fit into the first chart above, giving them value propositions and the ad inventory to monetize a demo that marketers lust after: millennials. Plus, Gawker's ecommerce efforts provide solid revenue.

7) Sports Talk: Startup sport sites have trumped the grandest sports media brand of all -- Sports Illustrated. Si.com is not in the charts, but is not growing at all: 14.9 million (8.8 million mobile-only) in December 2015 compared with 15.3 million (7.7 million mobile-only) in January 2015. And the Swimsuit issue you ask: 17.4 million (9 million mobile only) in February when the issue was released. Bottomline: the startups give the fans their due, where SI plays to its writers. And sexy models are everywhere on the Web — and Instagram, too.

8) Power Names: Denton took on journalism, Peretti harnessed technology, Arianna became a blogger and Tina played the room. Not surprisingly, Denton remains the most compelling, with Gawker fighting for what's next amid a staff rebellion and Hulk Hogan's potential court room neck lock. Actually, post-Tina Brown The Daily Beast is holding on, but stuck in the no man's traffic land of the teens.

As for FORBES, our domestic audience grew to 45.5 million in December 2015, up nearly 10 million from January 2015 and 15 million from October 2014. We continue to double down with our contributor and BrandVoice models as part of an increasingly ambitious vertical strategy. The key remains our unique content creation approach: staff editors and reporters in technology, investing, taxes, medicine, women, sports, autos, energy, entertainment and luxury joining forces with a scalable network of vetted, incentive-based expert contributors. Our BrandVoice partners, always clearly labeled, will be integrated even more deeply into the content experience (they publish through our content management system just like I do) as editorial and content marketing continue to converge. In the past our focus has been text. Now, we're excited about new video and podcasting initiatives, all part of a push to develop mobile experiences for the way consumers access, digest and share information. As we move ahead, it's clear to us there's no disentangling social, mobile and verticals as we attack audience, content and revenue.

The big question I ask myself: "What sites will I be watching a year from now.” It's how I help keep moving FORBES forward.